Dean Teaster's Ghost Town

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All Rise...

Judge Kristin Munson almost died with her boots on. Never take the stairs when wearing stiletto heels.

The Charge

I didn't know the Sci-Fi Channel started making Westerns.

Opening Statement

Panning a movie made to honor a director's father feels like kicking a puppy,
but Dean Teaster's Ghost Town is 30 minutes too long—and that's the
least of its problems.

Facts of the Case

Thirty years ago, Harmon Teaster watched as his father was dragged into the
street and executed by a group of Burnett family gunmen. Teaster got his revenge
by killing everyone on the Burnett ranch except for psycho son Victor, prompting
Maggie Valley to change their name to Ghost Town.

Harmon is an old man now, sick with fever, so his daughter Violet heads for
town, not knowing that Victor is running things and is still hankering for
vengeance.

The Evidence

Maggie Valley must be the most anal-retentive town in the west because
there's not a speck of dirt on anyone in the place. Everyone's clothes look
freshly starched and straight off the rack, and one shirt goes through a saloon
brawl, a main street beat down, and a rough night with a hooker and still
manages to look its whitest.

Movies live and die by their attention to detail, and Dean Teaster's
Ghost Town is full of weird oversights like this. Every time I started
getting into the movie, some simple mistake would pull me right out again,
especially in the utterly confusing opening sequence where the flashbacks, fever
dreams, and main story blended into a sepia-tinted slurry. There's constant
thunder in Maggie Valley but never any rain and a total of six things for sale
in the general store. One character rips off a bloody bandage and doesn't have a
wound underneath.

The story is more soap opera than horse opera, as scriptwriter DJ Perry
piles on the silly subplots, story holes be damned. The movie about bloody
vengeance spends over an hour setting up a reason for Harmon's return and when
the big gunfight finally kicks off, characters within slapping distance can't
hit each other with bullets.

If things had been more tongue-in-cheek it might have worked, but Dean
Teaster directs it as a deadly serious drama. The movie was filmed in the
streets and buildings of Ghost Town in the Sky in North Carolina, a Western
theme park built in the 1960s. A lot of Teaster's family worked at the park and
in the cowboy shows, and the movie is a love letter to his childhood, with
Teaster himself taking over his father's role as the town undertaker.

Because of the tone, the few actors that camp it up are completely out of
place. Herbert Coward and Bill McKinney team up for a Deliverance villain's reunion, and
McKinney chews the scenery like it's made of blood-soaked gingerbread.Ghost Town's one shining moment comes
when Rance Howard (The Red Pony) delivers a
soliloquy about the town's violent history and his own feelings of weakness;
it's shame the character he tells it to forgets it all by the next scene.

The actual transfer for Dean Teaster's Ghost Town is a blessing and
curse. The exterior scenes and mountaintop views look beautiful, but the
brightly lit interiors come off as stagy, and both the 2.0 and 5.1 stereo mix
highlight the unfortunate echoes that occur when recording in large wooden
buildings. Features include a photo gallery that's been put through a
sepia-toned wringer and a "Making of" that's more of a montage of the
cast's on-set shenanigans. There's also a commentary by Dean Teaster and DJ
Perry. Between the two, you have the perspective of an actor, writer, director,
producer, and Ghost Town expert, but the track is mainly about patting the cast,
the crew, and even each other on the back. Pretty much every small role is
played by a Teaster family member or Ghost Town in the Sky veteran, which
explains why things didn't get more brutal in the editing room. Unfortunately,
the track is mixed at the same sound level as the feature, so the two are often
drowned out by gunfire and yelling.

The Rebuttal Witnesses

Along with the film-related extras is a '60s travelogue that tours the
original park and shows some of the daily gunfights. It's wonderfully
politically incorrect blast from the past, boasting about "family friendly
entertainment" and then cutting to the can-can girls flashing their
panties. On the commentary track, Dean Teaster points out the faces that also
appear in his movie and shares stories from when he was a child and his father
worked there.

The DVD also comes with a free pass to the newly reopened Ghost Town in the
Sky that offsets the cost of the disc, if you've still got a hankering to visit
after watching a man being beaten, riddled with bullets, and set on fire in the
main street. Come on down and bring the kids!

Closing Statement

Dean Teaster's Ghost Town is well-intentioned but messy. It's a
self-indulgent flick with plenty of flaws, but the quality of certain
performances keep it from reaching "so-bad-it's-good" status.

Distinguishing Marks

• Feature Commentary by DJ Perry and Dean Teaster
• Behind the scenes of Ghost Town
• 1963 Ghost Town in the Sky Travelogue with commentary by Dean Teaster
• Photo Gallery
• Ticket to Ghost Town in the Sky theme park